


Though Storms Be Sudden and the Waters Be Deep

by Muccamukk



Category: Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: All The Ships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boats and Ships, Gen, Mixed Formats, Post-Apocalypse, Screenplay/Script Format, Story within a Story, Worldbuilding, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-17 11:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13075680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Miranda is onboard the Malaysian fleet when the Georgia Flu strikes Singapore. These are the voyages that follow, Miranda's and Doctor Eleven's.





	Though Storms Be Sudden and the Waters Be Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [volefriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/volefriend/gifts).



> Title from Stan Rogers' "Three Fishers." Script format largely lifted from Greg Rucka's extra features in _Batwoman: Elegy_. Poems quoted are by Alfred Tennyson.
> 
> Prinzenhasserin beta read this, and is the best!

The young man in charge of the skeleton crew aboard _Poseidon's Throne_ was thirty-two according to his jacket, but to Miranda's eyes, he didn't look old enough to drink. Liu Ai Lin, the crew chief of the anchored Malaysian fleet, introduced him as Aaqil bin Haji Ishraq, which Miranda mentally repeated to remember.

"I have my master's ticket," he said through Mr. Cho. "I would have been second mate, if she hadn't been set at anchor. They offered me a bosun's spot on _Poseidon's Jewel_ which was still sailing, or commander here." He shrugged before Mr. Cho finished translating, and Miranda studied his face for regret, but didn't see any.

"We want to get the ships moving again as soon as possible," Miranda told him. It had taken a long time to learn not to speak to the translator, rather than to the person she wanted to talk to. Captain Aaqil was smiling before Mr. Cho started, which made Miranda wonder if he was that affable, or if he understood more English than he let on. In either case, he didn't stop smiling when she added that she didn't know when that would be. "It could be a year."

"We are happy you visited," he said through Mr. Cho, but again Miranda thought she saw the words forming in English before he spoke in Malay. "We are happy to be working." It was the same thing they'd said on the last four ships she'd visited, though she could tell that resting at anchor made the sailors uneasy. This was not the era of the Vietnamese War, but pirates still existed, and they prayed more on the slow or anchored than on moving vessels.

Miranda was glad when the interview ended and she could start back down to the deck and the waiting helicopter. Of the five ships she'd visited that day, and the only differences that she could see between them was varying levels of wear and tear on their featureless blue-grey hulls and in their identical blue-grey corridors.

The air on deck smelt of salt, diesel exhaust and wet steel, and Miranda paused to breathe deeply. She thought about going to the rail to look at the sea far below. Hundreds of ships surrounded this one, their silhouettes stark against the grey water, and every one of them riding high and empty. This, she thought, was what collapse looked like: the colossal waste of it all.

Ms. Liu and Mr. Cho followed her back towards the helicopter, which was resting some thirty metres forward. Its engineer was poking at an open hatch below the rotors in a manner that suggested boredom rather than necessity. The pilot, Lisa Fontaine, had jacked her helmet headset into her phone and was listening to it with her head tilted. She was wearing aviator glasses, but even this far away, Miranda could tell her world was crumbling.

Miranda quickened her pace, and as she walked, she remembered a bit of poetry, oddly enough quoted in an Agatha Christie novel: _Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott._ By the time they got to the helicopter, the pilot had yanked her helmet off and was resting her face in her hands.

"What is the matter?" Ms. Liu demanded before Miranda could say anything. The engineer had closed up the panels and dropped back to the deck with a thud.

"We can't go back to the mainland," Ms. Fontaine said.

"What do you mean?" Miranda asked. She heard footsteps and realised that Captain Aaqil was standing behind her, and the rest of the crew was waiting in the hatchway.

"The Georgia flu. It's in Singapore."

> **_Station Eleven_ Vol. 0, No. 1: Invasion!**
> 
>  ***PAGE 16***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  Splash page. SPACE, black with stars, takes up most of the panel a handful of SPACE STATION DEBRIS floats in the background, bits of wiring, a solar panel, the barrel of a massive gun. In the lower edge, a we see the very upper edge of the EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. Text boxes float through the space, voices unidentified.
> 
> 1: We've lost the Earth's orbital defence platforms!
> 
> 2: How many?
> 
> 3: All of them!
> 
> 4: Command says their ships are just appearing out of nowhere. We can't stop them.
> 
> 5: We've got to go back, see if we can help them hold the line.
> 
> 6: What line? The line's gone!
> 
> 7: What can we do? This is a research station, for God's sake.
> 
> 8: My family's on in Singapore. I can't leave them there to die.
> 
> 9: But what help are we if we're dead?
> 
>  ***PAGE 17***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  A thin panel along the top of the page. SPACE. The edge of the HULL of a MASSIVE ROUND SHIP. It has a rough, unfinished surface, more like a shaped rock than a space station. The text boxes are still undifferentiated but clearly relate to the ship: STATION ELEVEN.
> 
> 1: We could still...
> 
> 2: **NO!**
> 
>  **TWO:**  
>  Interior of CAPTAIN LONAGAN'S OFFICE, two dozen PEOPLE are crowded into the space, mostly backs of their heads visible. LONAGAN stands with his back to the floor-to-ceiling WINDOWS and the artificial blue SKY and sunlight behind them, his arms are folded. He looks tired, dark circles ring his eyes, but he's expression is determined. DR. ELEVEN, still a young man, sits in the chair at Lonagan's right, looking up at him with admiration.
> 
> 3 LONAGAN: No. We cannot fight this. The invaders have cut through our military, defeated the best of our technology, and killed **millions**. They did this in a matter of days. We cannot fight them and win; we can only fight them and **die**.
> 
>  **THREE:**  
>  Close on LONAGAN'S FACE. In the window behind him, the sky is starting to shatter.
> 
> 4 LONAGAN: Our only choice is to **run**!
> 
>  **FOUR:**  
>  The FACES of the rest of group, most shocked. DR. ELEVEN at one end, expression rapturous, and the WOMAN with GREEN HAIR at the other, looking angry.
> 
>  **FIVE:**  
>  Return to long shot of Interior of LONAGAN'S OFFICE with Lonagan at the centre of the frame, but now the SKY behind the windows is a sickly green colour, and the hexagonal shapes of the light projectors are visible. No one reacts, yet, all too focused on LONAGAN.
> 
> 5 MAN: How? Our drive isn't yet online.
> 
> 6 DR. ELEVEN: I have an idea.

Three days after the flu hit Singapore and Malaysia, _Poseidon's Throne_ rounded the west tip of Sumatra and cruised into the Indian Ocean. Miranda had walked all the way to the bow, and now stood at the rail, watching the bulge of displaced water a hundred feet below. They were still riding too high, despite the supplies they'd raided in those frantic hours before their departure, and Miranda didn't know how they'd weather rough seas. She knew that if she turned back, she would see nothing besides hundreds of metres of empty deck—even the helicopter gone now as Ms. Fontaine had made her break for Australia—and then the block of the superstructure topped by its winged bridge.

She didn't turn, but instead looked out at the expanse of blue green that stretched unbroken to the sky. She heard footsteps on the deck behind her, light in soft-soled shoes, but still looked out.

"Another three hours," Ms. Liu said, "and we'll be out of sight of land."

Miranda nodded. In all the years she'd worked for Neptune Logistics, she'd never before been properly at sea. She'd drawn the drowned surface of Station Eleven thousands of times, and she saw now in this real twilight, that she'd gotten something off. She frowned at the waves, trying to break the image into colours and shapes, to map it into the orderly boxes of a comic.

Ms. Liu folded her hands on the rail, though she rested no weight on it. "I did not go into shipping to go to sea," she said. Her voice was soft enough that the wind almost carried her words away.

Miranda wondered who did, Captain Aaqil, she supposed. "You could have gone with the helicopter," she said.

"The helicopter won't make it," Ms Liu said, with the certainty of a woman who'd spent her life working out logistics. "Assuming good weather, an EC135 with four passengers has a practical range of six hundred kilometres. Ms Fontaine will have to make six stops to refuel between Singapore and Darwin. The chances of her finding fuel but not flu at all of them are, in my estimation, very low. Better to stay on the ship."

She didn't say that she didn't know if Australia would be any safer than Malaysia or Singapore. By now, the heartbeat of the global economy had likely pumped people and sickness to every corner of the globe. It had used the same mechanisms they had in their attempt to escape: fuel and engines to collapse the protection separation provided.

They'd had three hours after that first hurried conference on the deck of _Poseidon's Throne_ and Captain Aaqil's speech. Three hours to pool the fuel, food and crews of a half a dozen anchored ships and set out to sea. So much had been forgotten and left behind, but they could only afford so much risk.

Miranda did not know the Strait of Malacca, but she did know that it should have been busier. Even in the downturn, there should have been dozens of ships rushing from one side of the world to the other. They saw three. She'd been called up to the bridge to talk to one on the radio, since the captain didn't speak Arabic, Malay or Chinese, and Mr. Cho had gone with the helicopter. _Plague in Singapore,_ she'd transmitted on the emergency frequency. _Stay away, stay away, stay away._ Speaking into a headset on the glowing winged bridge, Miranda had felt modern and ancient all at once. Ms. Liu had told her later that one ship had flown yellow flags, and told her it meant sickness aboard in maritime traditions as old as sails.

"You did not go with the helicopter either," Ms. Liu said, and Miranda looked sideways at her. Her hair was still impeccably combed back into its chignon, and she was still dressed in the neat navy suit from their first day on board, but like Miranda she wore no make up, and had changed her gleaming patent leather flats for ship's work shoes. She'd worn coveralls the day before, when she'd been standing watch.

"No," Miranda answered, but didn't admit that had had less to do with careful weighing of her odds between the launch to shore, the helicopter to Australia and the freighter to the high seas, and more with a gut feeling that Captain Aaqil had thought this through. Maybe in a week's time, she'd be in New York, laughing with Leon about her adventure on the high seas. "You can't be too careful," she'd say, and he'd make fun of her for it over another ten years of friendship. Maybe the flu was in New York, and Leon was dead.

The sound of rotor blades made them turn as one, looking back over the length of the deck and up past the bridge, the setting sun blinding them both. Miranda shielded her eyes, trying to make out any detail on the dot in the sky.

Ms. Liu was already smiling. "I know the sound," she said, "that's an EC135. You can always hear the fenestron tail; it makes them quiet, less choppy."

It was close enough to see by then, and there it was: Neptune Logistic's teal and gold. By the time the blades stopped turning, almost the entire crew was on deck. The Malays crowded around Mr. Cho and the Malay rating, while Miranda and Ms. Liu pulled Ms. Fontaine and the engineer aside.

"No good," Ms. Fontaine said. "Djakarta was on fire, and I talked to a 3-12 coming up from Perth. It's bad there, and it didn't look likely for fuel further on. I fuelled up while I could, and came back to find you." She shook her head, and turned to the cabin, digging behind the seat for the blade tie downs. Ms. Liu had said she was from Melbourne, and had a partner there. She'd been trying to get a transfer to Neptune's Australian branch.

Miranda touched Ms Fontaine's shoulder. They could be the last three women in the world. In the world of _Poseidon's Throne_ , they were. "Lisa," she said. "We're glad you came back."

* * *

Miranda was half sitting watch, half sketching when Ai Lin came onto the bridge with two cups of tea.

"This is the last we'll get out of those bags," she said, setting it in front of Miranda. The tea was a pale straw colour against the white porcelain mug. The light of the radar screen reflected on one side of it, and a chart on the other. Someday, the global positioning satellites would deteriorate in their orbits and fall back to the Earth, but Miranda understood that the diesel would spoil before that happened.

"Thank you," Miranda said, and set aside her pages. She'd been drawing on the back of a single sided policy manual which had no end in sight, though she used each pencil down to the nub. About a year ago, she'd experimented with squid ink, but only made a bloody mess of it. She supposed she would have to try again soon.

When Miranda reached for her tea, a blip on the radar screen caught her eye. It was far to their port, to the east, but clear enough, and not matching any known islands. It was on a steady bearing with a decreasing distance: heading right for them. Miranda paged Captain Aaqil, and turned the binoculars to port.

Whatever it was, it was just a smudge on the horizon almost obscured in the glare of the sun on the water, but it was a damn big one. It was twenty miles away, and already riding high above the horizon. They hadn't seen a ship in months, and the last few had been abandoned, and _Poseidon's Throne_ only stopped long enough to pump out their fuel. No one dared go aboard.

"Is it a supertanker?" Ai Lin asked.

"No?" Miranda frowned. Something about the silhouette was familiar, a shape left over from the old world.

The radio crackled, the hailing frequency springing to life with a crisp American voice. "Cargo ship in the vicinity of Philip Island, Cargo ship in the vicinity of Philip Island, Cargo ship in the vicinity of Philip Island, this is the United States Aircraft Carrier _Dwight D. Eisenhower_ , United States Aircraft Carrier _Dwight D. Eisenhower_ , United States Aircraft Carrier _Dwight D. Eisenhower_. Over."

Ai Lin and Miranda exchanged a glance before Miranda reached for the headset. The blip on the radar was moving shockingly fast, almost three times their own speed.

"Answer them," Captain Aaqil told her in Malay. Miranda had been so fixated on the carrier that she hadn't heard him come on deck. Ai Lin passed him the binoculars, and Miranda slipped the headset over her hair.

" _Dwight D. Eisenhower_ ," she said, forcing her voice not to shake, "this is freighter _Poseidon's Throne_ , over."

" _Poseidon's Throne_ , _Eisenhower_ ," the man on the radio said, "ma'am, please maintain your present course and speed and allow us to come along side. Over."

"Is there anything we can do, Captain?" Ai Lin was asking in Chinese.

"Not against that," Captain Aaqil answered.

" _Eisenhower, Poseidon's Throne,_ " Miranda answered, "please state your intentions. Over."

" _Poseidon's Throne_ , _Eisenhower_ ," and now Miranda could hear the smile in the operator's voice, that sweet Midwestern accent she hadn't heard in two years, "ma'am, our captain would like to invite your captain to dinner."

> **_Station Eleven_ Vol. 11, No. 2: Station Nine**
> 
>  ***PAGE 6***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  SPACE, STATION ELEVEN and STATION NINE float side by side. Station Nine is sleeker and has more of a geometric shape than Station Eleven. In the background, a RINGED PLANET hangs in front of a DISTANT SUN.
> 
>  **TWO:**  
>  Interior of STATION NINE: a spired city of pink and mauve, all smooth sloops and hexagonal angels. The SKY is a bright blue with the occasional projected cloud. One of the towers is topped with a WIDE TERRACE and on it we see a GARDEN of sort trees and bushes with a cross-shaped path and fountain in the centre. A small table and figures surrounding it are just visible, between the garden and the edge of the platform.
> 
>  **THREE:**  
>  TABLE set with a white cloth and a complicated pattern of cutlery and crystal glasses of red wine. DR. ELEVEN is seated just inside the frame, his chair pushed a little back. To his right is CAPTAIN LUM, sitting straight as an arrow, and on the other side are ADMIRAL LEROY, a woman in her 40s with grey hair, sitting a little slouched, though the casualness of her pose may mask danger, and her AIDE DE CAMP, a sharp-faced young man who is leaning forward and getting in the way of the SERVANTS in red and gold livery and white gloves who are serving a fish.
> 
> 1 AIDE: Have you met any other survivors?
> 
> 2 LUM: A handful, in the early years. None recently.
> 
> 3 AIDE: What about the invaders?
> 
> 4 LUM: No, thank God.
> 
> 5 LEROY: Not **yet**. We must take care. We must **never** let our guard down. Station Nine has twenty N-27 Stinger Hunters ready to fly on two-minute notice at all times.
> 
>  ***PAGE 7***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  Close up of DR ELEVEN, a GLASS of wine in his hand, a cynical eyebrow raised. As in the previous scene, his careworn shirt and jacket look shabby compared to the rest of the setting.
> 
> 1 DR ELEVEN: And you? What of Station Ten?
> 
>  **TWO:**  
>  On LEROY and AIDE as the exchange a glance. There is something conspiratorial about it. Neither have touched the GLASSES in front of them.
> 
> 2 AIDE: Gone.
> 
> 3 LEROY: Admiral Sato returned to Earth, to render aid. That was ten years ago.
> 
>  **THREE:**  
>  On LEROY, her face crumbled with grief. This appears genuine.
> 
> 4 LEROY: I **told** him not to go. Told him that he'd be wasting lives, that he couldn't have done anything. But...
> 
> 5 AIDE (off page): Admiral.
> 
> 6 LEROY: Sato didn't listen, he **never** did, and our drive was broken by then. We couldn't even die with him.
> 
>  **FOUR:**  
>  Long shot of the GARDEN with the CITY in the background, large PTERODACTYLS fly between the spires, some with human riders.
> 
> 7 LEROY: Thus we stand here, trapped in the Tau Ceti System, and we stand as the memorial for Sato, for Station Ten, and for our beloved **Lost Earth**.
> 
> 8 AIDE: We continue the work.
> 
> 9 LEROY: We continue the work.
> 
>  **FIVE:**  
>  Close on LUM with DR ELEVEN behind him, now tipping his CHAIR back. Their expressions are sombre, and Lum's eyes are slightly narrowed.
> 
> 10 LUM: But what purpose can the work serve? You've spent **fifteen years** collecting data that you have nowhere to send.
> 
> 11 LEROY (off page): But it's the **work**

They'd been piped onto the main deck as the sunset, and now Miranda, Captain Aaqil and Cho sat at an oval table covered in white linen with white napkins fanned out from silver napkin rings, each pressed with _Eisenhower's_ logo. A steward in an ironed white uniform put soup plates in front of each of them.

"I feel like I've been abducted by aliens," Cho whispered in Malay, and Miranda raised a hand to cover her mouth. Captain Aaqil nudged Miranda's ankle with his toe, and she passed it onto Mr. Cho, who grimaced and picked up his translation again. Captain Aaqil himself didn't alter his attentive expression as the _Eisenhower's_ captain explained her understanding of the situation in the Pacific.

"The Marquesas were hit hard last typhoon season," Captain Davidson was saying. "We did what we could, but since the aviation fuel is down to our defence reserve, our effective range has decreased to what the launches can reach, and what wharves are maintained."

Miranda nodded, and glanced across at the officer next two her—to Captain Davidson's left—the commander of the air group, a trim black man with a '70s moustache. The ship's first officer sat across from him, next to Cho. Miranda hadn't seen anyone put this much thought into seating since that last dinner party in New York—the one that, had she known it was to have been the last, she would have left even earlier than she had.

"Have you seen any signs of the Georgia flu?" the air commander asked Miranda.

She took a small sip of her soup before answering that they hadn't. "Not since Singapore. We stood out to sea for four months," she added. Until the food and fuel had run low, and then they'd gone onto Perth and found it empty.

"And survivors?"

"We didn't look," Miranda answered. "There were pirates out of Tasmania nine months ago. They had zodiacs and guns."

That caught Captain Davidson's interest. "What did you do?"

"Crashed a helicopter into them and ran like hell," Captain Aaqil said in Malay, and Cho translated.

The table paused, and Miranda took another sip of her soup, which was flounder cooked in coconut milk and utterly delicious. She wanted to tip back the dish and drink it down.

By the dessert course—coconut milk ice cream and fried banana—the air commander was putting his hand on Miranda's wrist and asking where she was from. She laughed and asked if he'd ever heard of Delano Island, and then told him about the ferns and the lake with no bottom. He was from San Diego, and looked at her like she was describing Narnia.

"So you're Canadian, then?" Captain Davidson asked. She wore her grey hair in a tight cap and tilted her head like a cat when she asked a question. Miranda wondered if two years as the only surviving ranking officer in the entire United States military had made her a little fey.

"I did have a green card," Miranda said, "but it expired three months ago."

They laughed at that, but later still, as they returned to the boat deck, the air wing commander drew her aside—for a goodnight kiss, she thought—and asked if she wanted to stay with the _Eisenhower_. "I think we can extend our mandate to Canadians," he said, hand on her elbow. Miranda leaned in. He smelled nice, like clean cotton and rum, a tropical vacation less the sun screen. She wouldn't have minded that kiss.

"I don't think I could leave _Poseidon_ ," she said. "I'm useful there. What would I do here?"

"We're always looking for translators," he said. "We'd find something, or you could go to one of our colonies in Hawaii."

Miranda closed her eyes and breathed him in, feeling a flutter in her stomach like she hadn't since before Lisa Fontaine had died saving them from pilots. "I don't think so," she said. "Not yet."

His hand drifted up to her shoulder—she almost closed her eyes and leaned against him. "I think we'll be back in these parts in about six months. Which is about when our beaker types figure most of the diesel will start going sour. Maybe I'll see you all then."

"Maybe you will," Miranda said.

When they came onto the boat deck, which was light like noonday, the military band played "Til We Meet Again," and Miranda burst into tears, sobbing so hard that Cho and Captain Aaqil had to support her between them.

* * *

Miranda was still getting the hang of making paper. She could trade for it from one of the scavenger crews that rummaged through the remains of Pogo Pogo, but that itself seemed like a vanishing resource. She was working with pulped fibre and pigs feet, and considering the attractions of vellum in the Middle Ages. Trouble was she didn't have the inks to illuminate it.

In a waterproof locker under her bed, she still had a full set of Neptune Logistics policy books, with sketches in every spare corner. Ai Lin had given her pencils for her birthday a few months ago.

"I've been thinking of 'zines," she told Aaqil, one afternoon as she lifted the screen through the fibre soup in hope of a sheet of paper forming on its surface. "Do you remember those?"

Aaqil sat on the sill of her open window and watched the prospective paper come out in one muddy ball. "Yes," he said. "Printed blogs, yes? Photocopied? Used to be one million of them in KL." Moving to Samoa had finally pushed him into admitting that he did indeed speak English by now, but he hadn't given up using Malay whenever he could.

"I was thinking of making one," Miranda admitted, "Maybe a few pages at a time, black and white woodblock prints with hand lettering for the speech bubbles." She was also thinking of kicking the tub of proto-paper to the floor of the cabana, but Ai Lin would chew her out when she came home, and Miranda had spent hours pulping fibre bark to make it at all. "Once I figure the paper out."

Aaqil's boots thudded as they hit the floor. He stirred Miranda's goo with a stick, watching it gloop back down into the bin, and shook his head."You spent a hundred years filling that book of yours and wouldn't show a soul, not even Ai Lin or that American airman of yours, and now you want to publish?"

"Maybe," Miranda said. "If anyone's interested."

"If anyone's interested," Aaqil repeated, and Miranda couldn't gauge his tone well enough to work out what he meant. He'd been so moody since they'd mothballed _Poseidon's Throne_. His little solar-powered fishing sloop wasn't the same, not having people to command and care for had changed everything.

"You don't have to keep me company," she said. "Ai Lin will be back soon. They're off flogging coconuts or something,"

"Ai Lin likes it here," Aaqil noted, "more than she liked the ship."

Miranda straightened to look at him, then arched her back to stretch out a kink. "I like it here, too."

"It is a good place," Aaqil said. "A lucky place, of the kind of luck where a hurricane stops a plague, bittersweet luck."

"Bittersweet luck," Miranda agreed. If the typhoon hadn't wiped out the airport in year one, Georgia flu would have hit Samoa like it had so many of the other Pacific Islands. Instead, they'd faced recovery without aid and a future without the supplies the islands had come to depend on, but better that than tens of thousands or corpses. Aaqil kept twitching, as though he wanted to turn and look out her window to the blue-green water of the bay. "Do you want to stay?" she asked.

"At the moment, I do not have a choice," he said, but now he did turn and stared out past the bay, and past the sea, to something far in the west that Miranda could not see. "And yet, I cannot free my thoughts of home."

"I understand," Miranda said, though she knew no more about what Aaqil's home was like than she had when she'd first landed on _Poseidon's Throne_ , all those years before.

"If you could go back," Aaqil asked, "back across the sea, and up the coast and through the straits, all the way to that island of yours, would you do it?"

Miranda followed his gaze, imagining being able to bend her sight all the way around the world. Imagining lush green in a thousand colours, even in winter. Imagining cold rain and the smell of wet spruce and the peculiar scent of broken sword ferns. She'd spent the last few years with nothing but salt air, but still none of it smelled quite like the waters of the Salish Sea. She'd never felt air quite like that on the stone shelf right below the cliffs, where sharp waves slapped at the edge of the rock, and the whole world felt as though it were wrapped in a cloak of sea and fog and rain.

And yet... and yet, if she were to go back, who would still be there? What were the chances of Delano with all its ferry traffic escaping unharmed? It was far more likely the more remote communities had made it, Bella Bella, or Haida Gwaii. She had not been back to Delano Island for ten years before the Georgia flu, and when she had, it had been to see Arthur's family.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't go back to my island, not now."

"Would you come to mine?" Aaqil asked.

Miranda smiled. What is home if not the crew of the late lamented _Poseidon's Throne_? "Of course."

> **_Station Eleven_ Vol. 15, No. 12: The Meeting**
> 
>  ***PAGE 10***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  At SEA, in the background, we can see the bridges of the CITY, the amber and carnelian twilight sky takes up much of the page, with the water's surface near the bottom. DR. ELEVEN mans his ROWBOAT pulling hard and living a shallow wake across the surface. Just below the water, the HEAD of the AUGMENTED SEAHORSE is just visible, following the rowboat.
> 
> 1 DR ELEVEN (thoughts): I should hold revenge close to my heart. I should avenge Dr. Lonagan's murder. We should enact judgement on the undersea's crimes. I feel that beating through my veins with every stroke of the oar. And yet...
> 
>  **TWO:**  
>  Strip along the bottom. Mid shot of an ISLAND, the ROWBOAT is pulled onto the pebble BEACH and the AUGMENTED SEAHORSE is tethered to an outcropping. No people are visible, and the place appears utterly desolate.
> 
>  ***PAGE 11***
> 
>  **ONE:**  
>  At the centre of the island, BLACK ROCK SPIRES rise up on all sides, the stone jagged and volcanic. In the centre, on a flat patch of sand, DR. ELEVEN stands facing KARUGI, the green-haired leader of the undersea. She has her hand on the GUN at her hip. He is unarmed, his hands spread before him.
> 
> 1 KARUGI: You came.
> 
> 2 DR. ELEVEN: Twenty years we've played these lethal games, and you've never once called me. I had to come.
> 
>  **TWO:**  
>  Close on KARUGI, in three quarter profile, glaring. Her face has crows feet around her eyes, and her green hair is fading with streaks of grey. She still wears her sister's single SATURN EARRING.
> 
> 3 KARUGI: I didn't have anything to say to you.
> 
> 4 DR. ELEVEN (off page): And now?
> 
> 5 KARUGI: Now I do.
> 
>  **THREE:**  
>  Close on DR. ELEVEN, in three quarter profile, glaring. He too is no longer a young man, and he still wears CAPTAIN LONAGAN'S SCARF knotted around his neck. It's frayed at the edges. He faces Karugi in the preceding panel, but the two images are discrete.
> 
> 6 DR. ELEVEN: You think it's something I'll listen to.
> 
> 7 KARUGI (off page): You wouldn't have come otherwise.
> 
> 8 DR. ELEVEN: I have become unbearably tired.
> 
>  **FOUR:**  
>  Longer angle of DR. ELEVEN and KARUGI facing each other, this time with no line dividing them.
> 
> 9 KARUGI: We both have.
> 
> 10 DR. ELVEN: What now?
> 
> 11 KARUGI: You answer one question, then we talk.
> 
> 12 DR. ELEVEN: Ask it.
> 
>  **FIVE:**  
>  Long shot of the island, a tiny dot surrounded by the sea, the outlines of the broken sky panels just visible. This is a desolate, damaged world.
> 
> 13 KARUGI: Do you believe that the ruin of Rdargers's World is what happened to the Earth?
> 
> 14 DR. ELEVEN: I wish I did not.
> 
> 15 KARUGI: Then there is no Earth to which to return.
> 
> 16 DR. ELEVEN: And we must find a way to live together on this world.

The _Dwight D. Eisenhower_ , dropped their little sailing sloop off just north of New Caledonia.

"I wish we could take further west, Captain," the air group commander told Aaqil, "but we have a commitment to the people of the Triangle for as long as our reactor holds out."

"A lot of water to cover," Aaqil acknowledged. "When we come back, we will tell you what we found."

"You do that," the air commander said, and saluted Aaqil as he stepped onto the deck of _Poseidon's Dream_. Miranda he kissed on the cheek and told not to drown. Then they were all aboard, and the crew of the _Eisenhower_ pushed them into the open sea.

Miranda had to focus on the sails until they were out from under the carriers shadow and set just a point off the wind.

"The currents here are strong," Aaqil said.

"And the wind is fair," Cho added.

Miranda felt the ache that Ai Lin's absence left, but she still could not regret this voyage. She quoted a bit of poetry that Arthur had learned for some role or other, half a world and a hundred years away from these waters: "Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die."

Aquil laughed, and said that the sun was only just rising, and it was too early to be that dramatic, which made Cho laugh too and Miranda blush, but even then, she couldn't shed the heady feeling of the horizon stretching out before her.


End file.
